There are whispers in the international literary community that longtime contenders Philip Roth or Don DeLillo could take the prize this year. According to Ladbrokes, though, the American with the highest odds (at 10/1) is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. And Dylan gets a nod from actor (and novelist), Ethan Hawke, who relayed to Salon via email: "I hope the Nobel committee remembers our man, Bob Dylan. It would be a shame for him to reach his 80th birthday without a prize on his desk." An American has not won since Toni Morrison in 1993.

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But there is a decent chance that Dylan, Roth and others may have to wait much longer to be recognized. The Guardian notes that "earlier this year the head of the Swedish Academy, Peter Englund, revealed that 46 of the 210 writers nominated for this year's literature Nobel had been picked for the first time." New names on the Ladbrokes list "include the Chinese author Mo Yan and the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom," the former with odds 8/1.